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I posted this in response to a comment I received earlier today, but I thought it summed up my feelings on the day's events, so I'm reposting it here. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a brighter dawn.
9/11, believe it or not, was not the first thing on my mind when I posted this, and even if it had been, I certainly have no right to attempt to use it as cheap Internet crediblility, as I was in Florida when the Towers returned to the dust from whence man raised them in a plume of dust and broken bodies. Indeed, I will freely admit that I was largely unaffected by the tragedy in New York, and as days turned into months and weeks and years, horror gave way to nettled irritation at having the President interrupt my TV viewing with his ravings.
I do, however, love my British friends that I've met through my presence on both LJ and in Harry Potter fen, and I wanted them to know that they were in my thoughts, that I didn't think of them as toys with which I played on occasion, but as cherished members of my tiny social circle. Through them, I've learned about tea and British sex slang and incorporated such lovely euphemisms as "knob" into my vocabulary. It doesn't look like much, I know, but they've enriched my life in countless ways, and I wanted them to know I appreciated it.
I'm not going to spew any trite, empty words about tragedy and endurance, because I know jack-all about those things and am not afraid to say so, nor am I going to say that the bombings have wounded my immortal, emo soul, because the truth is that while I sympathize with the confusion and sadness felt by those affected, in a few minutes, I'm likely to have returned to eyeballing the hurricane churning toward my bit of earth, not because I don't care, but because that's all I can do. This tragedy isn't mine, and it would be arrogant of me to try and claim it or angst vicariously through the moldering revenant of 9/11. The Brits are the only ones with the right to grieve. All I can do is offer my love and my anger as a fellow human being.
I have little doubt that the British will persevere; these are the same gritty, hardy people who fended off the German Luftwaffe with planes held together by spit, hope, and duct tape, and already, they have begun to dust themselves off and get on with the business of living. Right now, I'm simultaneously proud that my ancestors came from their stock and sorry they got on the boat that left those shores, because I've never seen a finer display of coping with dignity.
9/11, believe it or not, was not the first thing on my mind when I posted this, and even if it had been, I certainly have no right to attempt to use it as cheap Internet crediblility, as I was in Florida when the Towers returned to the dust from whence man raised them in a plume of dust and broken bodies. Indeed, I will freely admit that I was largely unaffected by the tragedy in New York, and as days turned into months and weeks and years, horror gave way to nettled irritation at having the President interrupt my TV viewing with his ravings.
I do, however, love my British friends that I've met through my presence on both LJ and in Harry Potter fen, and I wanted them to know that they were in my thoughts, that I didn't think of them as toys with which I played on occasion, but as cherished members of my tiny social circle. Through them, I've learned about tea and British sex slang and incorporated such lovely euphemisms as "knob" into my vocabulary. It doesn't look like much, I know, but they've enriched my life in countless ways, and I wanted them to know I appreciated it.
I'm not going to spew any trite, empty words about tragedy and endurance, because I know jack-all about those things and am not afraid to say so, nor am I going to say that the bombings have wounded my immortal, emo soul, because the truth is that while I sympathize with the confusion and sadness felt by those affected, in a few minutes, I'm likely to have returned to eyeballing the hurricane churning toward my bit of earth, not because I don't care, but because that's all I can do. This tragedy isn't mine, and it would be arrogant of me to try and claim it or angst vicariously through the moldering revenant of 9/11. The Brits are the only ones with the right to grieve. All I can do is offer my love and my anger as a fellow human being.
I have little doubt that the British will persevere; these are the same gritty, hardy people who fended off the German Luftwaffe with planes held together by spit, hope, and duct tape, and already, they have begun to dust themselves off and get on with the business of living. Right now, I'm simultaneously proud that my ancestors came from their stock and sorry they got on the boat that left those shores, because I've never seen a finer display of coping with dignity.
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